Okay, I've done some toad hunting in my day, but I've never, EVER seen anything like this before:
DUDE!!!!
THAT THING IS HUGE!!!!
Yeah, park rangers in Australia just happened to stumble across this bad boy when they were out doing park ranger stuff in the rainforest up in Queensland. They tried to come up with a name for the beast, but they ended up just calling it Toadzilla, because why not?
Dubbed "Toadzilla", the cane toad, an invasive species that poses a threat to Australia's ecosystem, was spotted by "shocked" park ranger Kylee Gray during a patrol in Conway National Park in Queensland state on Jan. 12.
Gray and her colleagues caught the animal and brought it back to their office, where it weighed in at a 2.7 kg (6 pounds).
Guinness World Records lists the largest toad at 2.65 kg (5.8 pounds), a 1991 record set by a Swedish pet.
Yeah, this was no pet.
This was the real deal.
And it looks like it'll break the record for world's largest toad.
However, it won't be breaking any more records anytime soon. See, the cane toad was introduced to Australia in 1935 in order to control cane beetles and other pests. But, with no natural predators, it didn't take long for the cane toad's population to skyrocket, making them a threat to the ecosystem.
So while Toadzilla may just be the world's largest toad, it's also, now, the world's largest dead toad as well.
[S]enior park ranger Barry Nolan, told Reuters the animal was euthanised due to its "ecological impact" — the usual fate for the toads across Australia…
"A female cane toad like potentially Toadzilla would lay up to 35,000 eggs. So their capacity to reproduce is quite staggering. And all parts of the cane toad's breeding cycle are poisonous to Australian native species, so prevention is a big part of how we need to manage them," he said.
One day you're the world's largest toad, next day you're hopping around in toad heaven, eating all the bugs you can imagine.
